‘I learned Spanish because we were planning a holiday and thought it would be fun to speak to people in their own language.’
Photograph: Alamy

Imagine I gave you a book full of words, numbers and strange symbols – 150-odd pages of the stuff. Some of the things relate to each other in obvious ways, others not so much. Now suppose I’m going to test you: 50 questions about the contents of that book, how do you think you’d do?

Well, if you can drive a car, chances are you’ve already done very well: those of you who passed the theory test recently will have got at least 43 out of 50 questions correct. That’s just one everyday example of the average person’s capacity to learn something that appears complex at first. Despite recently making the questions tougher, the DVLA still reports that the test has a pass rate above 50%.

What you already know is the key to learning new things

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Now, why do you think all those people learned so successfully? I don’t have an official answer, but we can probably discount any notion of the Highway Code being a particularly compelling read. It’s far more likely to do with the fact that those taking the test – very often teenagers – see a driving licence as their ticket to freedom. When we really want to learn something, we generally do.

That may seem glib, but it holds true. Every hobby we’ve ever taken up had a learning curve. If we kept at it long enough to become skilled, we most likely did so because we enjoyed it. It might not have even felt like learning.

We don’t just perform these mental feats for pleasure either – think back to every time you scraped a good grade at school when it really mattered.

The common thread is motivation. I wouldn’t dare claim it’s the only thing you need – there are plenty of other factors at play – but without it, you’re going nowhere fast.

Allow me to use myself as an example. I’m Matthew, and languages are my thing. I’ve been learning them all my life, and I’m starting to lose count of how many I speak (it’s not a memory problem, but rather a semantic one – at what point can one really claim to speak a language?). Let’s say it’s somewhere around 20, and I’m fluent in about 10 of those.

What makes me special? Well, nothing. I just love languages. I learned each of my languages because I sincerely wanted to. That doesn’t mean I ever thought “Spanish is great, I’m going to learn it,” and then went right ahead. Even I’ve never been quite that crazy about the nitty-gritty of semantics and syntax. I learned Spanish because we were planning a holiday and thought it would be fun to speak to people in their own language. I was nine at the time. Each subsequent language had its own reasons, some personal, some cultural, and some fairly nonsensical. Not one was ever vaguely linguistic.

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If it’s too late to choose your topic wisely (or you never had a choice in the first place), you can at least work with what you’ve got. Need to learn about business but you’re more the artistic type? Learn about the business of art, or just keep in mind that good business sense affords you a greater degree of artistic freedom later on.

2. Make it matter

Make sure you know why you’re learning in the first place. “I’ve spent too long on this course to fail now,” you might say. But that, along with many others, is a terrible reason to do anything. Think about why you started the course or task in the first place – what’s the end goal? A career you want? A deeper connection with someone you care about? A new life abroad? Those are better starting points.

3. Make use of it

This bit of advice can be applied to languages more readily than to some other areas, but it still works elsewhere. The trick is to make sure you recognise your own success by using what knowledge you have, as you acquire it. In my case, that often means ordering food in a new language with broken grammar and poor pronunciation (see the video below). For a budding photographer, it might mean taking snaps around the house to practise the fundamentals they’ll need later on.

Matthew and his twin brother Michael ordering food in Turkish in Berlin.

4. Make it entertaining

If you’re studying a language, this is easy – just go out (or online) and speak to people. Really, if you’re learning just about anything practical – and not at medical school – “give it a go” is pretty solid advice.

5. Commit yourself

Regardless of what you’re learning, or what else you’d rather be doing, just get stuck in. After all, who ever regretted learning anything?

Matthew Youlden (@MatthewYoulden) is a linguist, lecturer, translator, interpreter and polyglot. He started teaching himself languages as a child and now works as language ambassador for the language-learning app Babbel. With the right tools, he believes that anyone can learn a new language.

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